Introduction to Volume 2, Issue 1

There is one thing about usability professionals: we always ponder, wonder, reflect, and introspect on the state of our own profession. Arnie Lund in his invited essay “Post Modern Usability” suggests that while the usability profession has adopted some post-modernistic principles such as focusing more on user experience and less on the formalism, the profession needs to move on beyond post-modernism to shape “a practice that is a synthesis of the understanding of the user and context, and the growing understanding of the principles of how people interact with the world”.

The first peer-reviewed article in this issue is appropriate for the voting season the United States. Selker, Rozenwieg, and Pandolfo present a “Methodology for Testing Voting Systems” that can be applied to any kind of voting system. The approach promotes the use of actual voting sites with real poll workers. Another important aspect that emerges from their work is the need to train the poll workers who participate in the study to increase experimental control and reduce extraneous variability.

We continue with what may become a tradition: publishing studies of mobile usability. Koskinen, Repo, and Hyvönen in their “WAP and Accountability: Shortcomings of the Mobile Internet as an Interactional Problem” propose a different approach in testing and accounting for the known limits of WAP usability. They propose the theoretical construct of Situated Action and ethno-methodological perspective to study and explain usability aspects of WAP.

This issue includes another article related to mobile usability. Ryu and Smith-Jackson present the “Reliability and Validity of the Mobile Phone Usability Questionnaire (MPUQ)”. They describe the rigorous process of analyzing and validating the questionnaire that can be used primarily for summative evaluations and comparisons, but also for formative evaluations.

Finally, I would like to thank all associate editors and all the contributing reviewers for the excellent and professional reviews they offered in the first year of JUS resulting in a high quality first volume of contemporary usability studies.

The Authors

Avi Parush is an associate professor in the Industrial Management and
Engineering Faculty, The Technion, Israel, and a full professor on leave from Carleton University, Ottawa. He is also an adjunct professor in Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada.
With an academic background in cognitive experimental psychology (PhD, 1984,
McGill University, Montreal, Canada), his areas of expertise are human factors engineering, human computer interaction, and usability engineering.
His research areas have included patient safety, driving safety, human error and spatial cognition.
He has adapted and developed analysis and design techniques and innovative approaches in human factors, HCI and usability.
His current research focuses on teamwork in complex and critical situations, human factors in healthcare, and conventional and simulation-based training with a focus on team training.
He is the emeritus founding Editor in Chief of the Journal of Usability Studies, and is currently on the editorial board of the Human Factors journal.